Grocery Shopping

mrsdumplin

Mrs_Arcanum wrote: »

Try calculating your shop in your head as you put things on the conveyor belt. It helps to concentrate your mind on what you are spending to try and see how close you are to the total. Spend less then give yourself a pat. If the total is regularly more than your estimate - use a list and stick to it (allowing some for bargains). Always remember a bargain is only a bargain if it is something you need or will use on a regular basis.

Hi tried this in the shop that I had to do as Tescos had no fruit, and a few other bits...I added it up on the conveyor at about £35...£51 !!!!!!...

Got a bit to learn me thinks

mrsdumplin

CFC wrote: »

£100 a week for 2.5 people is insane. Get your courage together and visit Lidl or Aldi. Go in with a list of what you need for which meals. A meal plan is ESSENTIAL in terms of reducing your spend, plan for EVERY meal and do NOT buy anything else.
Visit the old style board for detailed advice!

Thanks
Insane is a bit strong

mrsdumplin

Clarie wrote: »

Hiya,
There are 3.5 of us as well (oh, and a cat) and we live on more or less 45 a week - and that includes cleaning stuff and toiletries when necessary. I work it out as 15 per adult (we lived on 30 a week before our lodger moved in).
I plan my meals weekly. Then use mysupermarket.com to order and buy. It inevitibly comes from Tesco though as there where I know all the offers!. The real trick is putting what you need on the list and then when it goes over the limit you take things off till it's back under! If I want to go in person and save delivery fee I print the list off and take it with me and there's a ban on buying things not on the list. (If I go with DH he has a £1 junk allowance <grin>)

Some things off the top of my head:
Buy rice/ potatoes/ pasta in bulk. We buy 10 kilos of rice, 5 kilos of pasta at a time. Which means weeks we buy these we eat very cheaply and don't buy meat - but we have more to spend all the other weeks.
We are constantly downgrading in terms of brand. My friends taught me that once you are making meals from scratch you really don't need good quality chopped tomatoes, cheese, etc.
We have chosen to go for nice meat over lots of meat - so I will only buy free range chicken, or british meat. I just don't buy it very often.
Seperate meat and freeze in portions.
Last year we grew veg, so we could afford to buy meat. (It's not cheaper to grow veg than to buy value, but it is cheaper to grow veg than to buy the equivalent of local organic produce)
Deserts, chocolate - all treats for when guests come over etc. Don't think we ever buy alcohol unless it's for us going out- guests tend to bring it when we have dinner!
The cat eats biscuits again bulk bought.

Some weeks (esp if I haven't stuck to budget recently) we have store cupboard weeks where we buy milk and bread and eggs and some fresh veg for a tenner, and then eat out of the freezer and the tins.

I over cook every single meal so I have leftovers for lunch/ the next meal. DH has rolls or wraps made at home.

A rough week plan is
cereals for breakfast. leftovers ( I over cook on purpose) for my lunch, rolls for DH's lunch, cans of soup for lodgers lunch. (according to our preferences)
Evening/ main meals:
Pasta meal (ie chopped toms, courgettes, maybe frozen sausages)
Fish meal (whatever is cheapest of fish counter if we go in, salmon pasta if not!)
Sausages (or chicken or fish or something) potatoes and veg
Curry (frozen quorn (or roast leftovers), jar sauce, rice)
Roast (surprisingly cheap when worked out per person! and grand for leftovers)
beans/cheese/eggs on toast
One meal from a recipe book which I need specific ingrediants for - this is often the night guests come, or our veggie night (coz I don't know many veggie recipes)

And then other weeks I do a variations on a theme.. so if it's mexican and I've bought guacomole and sour cream and tortillas then we'll have fajitas one night, and quesadillas another, and wraps for lunch. (still ever managed to finish a jar of guacamole before it goes off! going to have to make it from scratch :-) )

Or if I have lots of potatoes we'll have shepherds pie, and fish pie, and meat and potatoes and veg, and spanish omelette.

Gosh, written out it all sounds a lot more organised than I thought I was!

Thanks, that was really helpful. I will be pinching your planner, finding recipies and doing a more through list and pricing it up !

mrsdumplin

sickasachip13 wrote: »

I do a monthly tesco / asda shop (depending on who's given me vouchers / free delivery). We spend £150-170 on this. We then spend £20 per week on fresh fruit, veg, bread, milk and meat. This is for three of us plus several dogs and cats. We buy our meat at the co-op as I won't eat battery farmed chicken and want to eat british meat wherever possible. The co-op does three for a tenner, which is great, and the chicken is barn-reard.

I am doing a lot more cooking, more soups and sauces particularly. For example - one pack of sausages could do us one meal if we had it with veg and potatoes. chop them up and fry them a bit with a couple of onions, add a tin of tomatoes (chopped yourself in the tin to save the 3p difference between chopped and not), some value mixed herbs, any bits of veg that need using up, a bit of chilli (sauce / flakes / ground), a drop of red wine if there's any hanging around. Cook it up. Serve with pasta / baked potato. Or cook pasta, mix it up with sausages, make a basic bechamel or white sauce (milk, marg, flour whisked up over heat). Tip the pasta and saus mix into a baking tray, pour the white sauce over the top (add cheese if you have it) and bake. Three meals for three adults right there.

Pinching that recipe..that sounds yummy :T

mrsdumplin

Thanks everyone.

I'm going to re read all you posts and start making my list for next week. Target £50...

snookey

I went shopping to lidle today and got three large bags of shopping for 58.00. Mind you I was only going to spend twenty, lol.
They had five tins of kiti kat for 2.00 which is quiet good. Mangoes for 49 pence down from 99pence. They do do brands such as one mentioned and are good value overall.
It seems a shame that people become hooked on only the brands they know as they are fodder for the big supermarkets.
Do your pocket a favour and try the cheaper supermarkets.

Brighid

mrsdumplin wrote: »

Thanks everyone.

I'm going to re read all you posts and start making my list for next week. Target £50...

Thats a great target - but a big challenge to cut so much in one week!! Why not post your list on here when you're done (along with your meal plan) and we can see if we can help?

Don't forget to hunt through your freezer to see what you can build your meals around. The first week I did that I had enough stuff for a fortnight!!

B

katsu

2 people, currently on around £50-60 p/w:

1 - I do porridge daily for breakfast - the luxury I do is to make it with milk and add about 2 portions of chopped fresh fruit. You could cook apple and cinnamon in it. I do banana, cherries and berries. I buy a big portion of fruit then calculate how much I can use each day to last 5 or 7 says (so 750g of cherries /7 days = 100g a day. I then work out roughly how many cherries that is (8-10) and chop them up to make them go further. I spend around £10 on fruit for the week (porridge and lunches - we eat a lot of fresh for health reasons so you could reduce that) and buy 2x4l of milk

2 - I make DH a daily pack-up containing HM sarnie (one tin of tuna does two days as tuna sweetcorn mayo, cheese on one day and a sliced deli meat on 2 days), a couple of sticks of celery, HM jelly in a small tupperware carton (1 pack of jelly makes 5 cartons), an apple, a pear, grapes, some cucumber or carrot and a small portion of nuts and fruit or a treat bar.

3 - my lunch is generally leftovers or a smaller pack-up

4 - dinners. For these I meal plan in detail and look for other recipes to use up ingredients (like sharing a carton of creme fraiche).
Last week was:
Quorn lasagne and salad - 2 dinners 1 lunch
Veg soup and HM bread - 2 dinners 1 lunch
HM chinese using quorn - 1 dinner
pasta and sauce with cheese and veggie meatballs - 1 dinner
Turkey bacon spaghetti, again with huge salad - 1 dinner.
Try this one: I use use quorn bacon/turkey bacon as it is healthier. Original source is Stella Bowling's Diabetic Cookbook
1 clove garlic in saucepan in 1 table spoon oil with I think 25g of chopped walnuts. Fry for a few mins
Add the turkey bacon and stirr for a bit
Add a tin of chopped toms and heat through for ~10 mins (basically it needs to reduce and get thicker)
meanwhile make pasta for 2 (so say 150g dried pasta)
Add some chopped fresh parsley to the toms at the last minute then stir it all together and eat

I also recommend meals like sausage and mash with baked beans for filling, cheap and fairly healthy depending on the sausages!

To reduce my fruit and veg spend I have been to the local market and wholesalers. I buy loo roll, laundry liquid etc on special and stock up. I clean most things with white vinegar or washing up liquid. I have made a list of all the bits in my freezer and cupboards to stop me buying more of what I have and to help me think of how I can save money by using it up.

Jesthar

I spend about £60-70 on average in the supermarket (not the cheapest chain, either) a month for both me and my cat, and that's including organic items and some items I could downshift on if I really wanted to.

My biggest savings come from stocking up when things are on offer - put simply, if I use it, it's on offer, and it will keep, I buy as much as I can sensibly store in my little house!

For example, my breakfast cereal is currently on at half price for a few weeks, so every time I go shopping I'll buy at least three or four boxes of it. I only get through 2-3 boxes a month, so by the time the offer ends, I'll have enough stashed away to see me through to at least autumn. Likewise, I buy several jars of my favoured brand of coffee whenever that's on special offer. And when I need something like this when isn't on offer, I just buy what I immediate need and wait for the next offer to roll around to stock up again.

You can do the same with tins, jars, rice, pasta, loo roll, cat food, gravy granulesetc. - anything that won't perish. Also anything you can freeze, like bread or packs of meat. Keep an eye on the fruit and veg for offers as well, and remember - a value carrot or mushroom might be a funny shape, but it's still a carrot or mushroom. A friend of mine takes her eating carrots out of the big farm grade nets she buys for her horse! :rotfl:

Slow cookers and batch cooking are also fab - I have my own recipe for bolognese which costs about £5-6 tops for about 8 good size portions (7 to freeze as homemade ready meals) - all you need are a couple of big onions (or several value onions), about 750g mince, a tin of value chopped tomatoes, a squeeze of tomato paste, some value mushroom, a few sticks of celery, some grated carrots and some mixed herbs, stock and cornflour/gravy granules. Tastes ten times better than Dolmio, even if I do say so myself - I can put the full recipe up if you want

t4mof

Things I look out for in Tesco is the frozen chicken fillets (2 brands and they seem to alternate the half price offer between the 2) at 2.99 - usually enough for 3-4 meals for 2 adults.

Mince 900g - 2 for £6. I always freeze one and use it the following week. With this week's mince I have made a cottage pie (2 meals for 2 adults), burgers (1 meal for 2 adults) and a spag bol (1 meal for 2 adults) - that's half the week on £3 for the meat. I always bulk up cottage pie and spag bol with carrots, onion, mushroom and pepper so you can get away with less meat.

In the value range I buy apple juice, biscuits, chocolate mousse for the kids, fish fingers, frozen veg, blackcurrant and orange squash. Everything else is pretty much Tesco own brand or discount brand. I think the only thing I won't compromise on is Heinz Baked Beans and I don't buy them very often.

I get my bread (2 loaves for £1), toilet roll (£2 for 9 rolls) and crisps (various offers) from Farmfoods.

Another couple of tips I've found useful - do your shop online first and then print the list off and stick to it. Get the benefits of the online shop without paying the delivery charge.

The other thing I do is split my "financial" month into 4 weeks. I get paid on 24th of the month so Week 1 is 24th - 31st, Week 2 is 1st - 8th, Week 3 is 9th - 15th and Week 4 is 16th - 23rd. I therefore shop 4 times every month on 24th, 1st, 9th and 16th meaning that sometimes I need to make sure I've got enough for 8 days but over the year I shop for 48 weeks of the year rather than 52!

We are a family of 4 (boys aged 9 and 6) and I added up all the shopping bills for 2010 and it worked out at £66 a week. This included my 3 big shops of the year - Christmas and the 2 boys birthdays which are always bigger than the average shop.